Expecting a BIG10 title and expecting to show progress from year 1 to year 2 and beat a bad CU team with a 1st year HC are two very different expectations. The first one is being unrealistic and "expecting the world". The 2nd one was very realistic.
How did they get it so wrong?
- Thread starter Ewooc
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Nobody would be worried at all if NU won that game in OT. They would be 2-0 just like everybody thought they should be. But a bad quarter of football, a couple dropped passes and 3 or 4 bad play calls and the season is over according to some people.
If Frost and everyone is in this for the long term, which he is. It would have almost made more sense to to skip the JUCO and transfer route and just go hard after the young incoming freshman. Let them learn the right way from day 1 and have them for 4 or 5 years. Yes the Juco plugs a hole, but it is a short term fix and so far isn't panning out anyways.
So we shouldn't have taken LaVonte David? How about Jarvis Redwine? How about Mike Rozier? Nobody knows for sure how those kids are going to turn out and we had some GAPING roster holes we needed to fill because we had almost a complete washout in one of Riley's recruiting classes. IF you take 30+ high schoolers it's almost impossible to balance your classes out and Frost needed more mature players right away.
They didn’t get us wrong. You saw the team they saw for nearly 3 quarters.
A lot of folks are overreacting to the loss. We are good enough to compete for the West. Also vulnerable enough to lose to CU. We are a young team, especially on offense. An inconsistent team.
The difference between blowing CU out and losing came down to about 3 ill timed plays.
Fans can’t see that because of the way we lost, which was very discouraging, and who we lost to. It makes all of us insecure about the team and staff going forward. It makes us worry we’re the same team that went 4-8. We aren’t, but we aren’t without our flaws, and we do miss Zig and Stan.
Finally, nearly all of the hype came from the national media. Most local guys predicted us to go 8-4, still very doable. They weren’t wrong, though fee if any had us losing to CU.
Right. We were favored by 4, not 40. Yes we should’ve won the game but it’s not some incredible upset. We are a good team with many flaws. We need to remember how to win. If our kicker was healthy we likely win the game, we aren’t talented enough to get by at a disadvantage. I don’t doubt we’re on the right track but the sky is falling stuff is already old.
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:OMG, we lost in OT on the road in high altitude. Oh wait I forgot the altitude is an excuse. Someone tell that to Scott Shanle who was on the radio today talking about how difficult that is when you’ve never done it before. What does a guy with a Super Bowl ring know?
I think he is talking long term, so a complete washing out of one class would be a short term issue.
I have never been a big fan of taking juco players, even though you can name some guys that have worked out.
Were the “gaping holes” in the roster from that 2017 class filled by Juco players?
Lastly, I don’t think the intent on going after juco players was to fill holes in a particular class. It was to replace holes in the roster, in general. I doubt the lack of a redshirt sophomore class is the reason we lost to Colorado.
We as a fanbase have lived on these kind of reasons and excuses for the last 20 years. Bottom line this was a bad loss and should not have happened. We can come up with whatever reason we like to try and justify it. There are plenty of teams, plenty of bad team who have went into boulder and got a win, they seem to manage the altitude just fine. In the end as always it comes down to coaches
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I’m sure it has an effect - but they did a study looking at altitude and home record of the broncos over the last decade + and concluded their home field advantage wasn’t anymore significant than the other NFL teams
Some of the gaping holes in our roster (wasn't referring to just the 17 class. It was just an example) were in fact filled by JUCOs. Frost has stated many times that he's going after the best players he can find whether they're a Juco or high schooler. One obvious need was some speed at WR and a RB. He found those things. Bell didn't work out. Woodyard hasn't done much yet. Woodyard is in fact a burner.
I agree that the Colorado loss wasn't due to roster holes other than maybe an upperclassman center. When you have to start plugging in freshmen and sophomore walk ons in to your starting O line, you obviously have some holes. I just don't get criticism of taking a Juco. IF you think he's better than what you've got, you take him if he fits with your roster management.
And it shouldn't have happened....why? Only Nebraska could have done things differently? Plenty of bad teams have gone into Boulder and won? I guess last Saturday Nebraska was worse than a bad team. You and others apparently can't accept that is possible.
Deontai Williams, Will Honas, and Mills were all juco starters this year at positions we don't have a lot of depth. Unfortunately Williams got hurt and Mills has been struggling so far, but maybe he gets things turned around.
A lot of teams take Juco players, Alabama takes jucos all the time. They generally get them on their offensive and defensive lines where jucos are much more valuable though. I'm not a big fan of taking jucos at the rb or wr position, those are positions where you see a lot of freshman players come in and are able to produce right away.
Fans are really dumb when it comes to close games. We lost in overtime to a team that vegas thought was an even match. It sucks...but I actually feel better to get that rank off our name and let the kids season and toughen up a bit with some adversity. We aren't good enough to have to worry about winning with expectations we just need to play better win or lose. The one thing that bothered me concerning the staff was the idea that we really played well in the first half on offense. We basically had two broken plays and two tds and struggled to move the ball after that. It felt like we should be winning by 30 at half but the 17-0 was kind of awkward considering out defense was so dominant. All that colorado had to do was stop the busts and they stopped our offense.
They did more than stop the busts. They made adjustments to put pressure on Martinez. We didn’t have an answer, series after series, and the pucker factor shot through the roof.
So you are comparing NFL to college and that applies how? I’ll take the word of someone who walked the walk.
It clearly was a factor. The defense looked absolutely out of gas in the 2nd half.
Frost said after watching the video that in fact it did appear that the D was tired. I'm kind of surprised he couldn't have picked that up in real time.
You still can't quit playing just because you're tired. They should have come out the second half ready to put the game away. When the game got close in the 4th quarter, our team should have had the mental toughness to hold Colorado off and make plays and play with energy. Honestly the most disappointing thing for me about that game was we didn't do that.
Good post. I feel the same way. We have been hearing how great we were going to be all summer long. Where is that explosive offense? We have looked confused, slow, and not physical. We look worse than last year. Colorado had a 1st year coach and beat us ???
I agree it either was a huge factor, or this team is horribly conditioned and that should be a major area of focus going forward.
At this point Im not to horribly concerned with the W-L. My concern is the lack of development and growth by the players and the coaches. We should be seeing a pretty good jump over last year. We look no better in general and worse on offense. The only areas I would say I see progress is run D and takeaways. Considering we gave 24 pts in the 4th to CU those gains are minimal in the grand scheme of things. The rest we have taken a step backwards over last year for year 2 that is not a good sign. I hope we see a switch flip at some point and we can all shrug these first 2 weeks off as a fluke.
That how devaney quick fixed his team in 69 with a few juco linemen and linebacker. I believe bob Terrio was a juco. Tom was very selective in jucos because he said you usually had them for only two years and if they didn’t start in year 1 with the program you only had 1 left either boom of bust. I don’t have a problem with recruiting jucos but they sure haven’t payed off for coach frost yet
Agree. There’s a reason why CU hasn’t lost a home game in the last 10 years.
1 word, altitude. Wait . . . what??
Puuhhlease people! Quit making this an excuse.
Another worn out excuse is experience. According to the depth charts, 9 of Colorado's 22 projected starters were RS Sophomores or younger. It was 5 for Nebraska.
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everyone is glossing over this. It wasn’t just a couple of busted plays and 1 quarter let down. We got out schemed in the second and didn’t or couldn’t adjust. We can bang on all day long about it ok, we just lost a road game. The issue is HOW we lost.
Nope. Every book I visited had Nebraska as a -3 to -4 favorite on the road at Colorado. I did not see one oddsmaker set this contest as a toss-up.
-3....is a toss up....that is a punter kicking a field goal or a safety slipping in the grass, or a ref calling a bad PI call....-1 to -7 are toss ups because a single random event can change the game. I certainly think we were favorites but we had a punter miss a field goal and we gave up a 97 yard TD on a trick play. That is 10 points that came from random luck. That one trick play could have gone so many ways...a safety, a incomplete pass, a 50 yard gain...even if we stop them at the 50 we win because they wouldn't have had enough time to tie the game. Giving up 97 yards on one freak play upset the balance of the game.
you keep calling the one score games toss ups or coin flips
since 2018, we are 1-6 in these toss up games ... if these games really just come down to luck or are coin flips the odds of us losing 6 of 7 of these "toss up" games is 6%.
We are defying the odds at an alarming rate
Nebraska had a 96% win percentage in that CU game with 2:55 to play in the 3rd quarter
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It's 4000 feet, they weren't playing in Nepal. The effect from altitude was minimal at best.
I know, that's not very much. Frost got out coached. Altitude is a pathetic excuse.
And what exactly have you trained for at Lincoln’s elevation and then gone and done in Colorado? Again I’ll take the word of someone who walked the walk. You know it was minimal....how?????